-First
Person: By Any Other Name
-Columns: Daisy Hernandez, Patricia Smith and Gloria
Steinem

Feminism
is not a racist ideology. If someone claims to be a feminist
but exhibits exclusionary behavior and is reluctant to
change--we all have prejudices, so I'm not holding feminists
to a higher level--I expect them to change. What I say
to women of color and other young feminists or womanists
is this: there is no Women's Movement, capital W, capital
M. There are women's movements, plural. And those movements
are alive and well in communities of color. Many of the
strongest voices in our communities of color are women.
We carry our communities on our backs. With or without
the label, we're there. To say that women of color are
not interested in equality for women is just not true.

But
many women of color have had negative experiences with
individual, white, so-called feminists or with organizations
and institutions within a feminist framework. I've had
negative experiences. But we accomplish much more together
than separately. I don't throw out the notion of feminism
because of the negatives. We all have to work on these
negatives. We cannot sum up a movement based on individual
experiences.